#67: I built a 65" Steam Deck, kinda

Good morning, and welcome to a new edition of the overkill digest newsletter.

I'm now officially on vacation for two weeks from my job-job, and I have so many games to catch up on: Final Fantasy VII Rebirth, Warhammer 40,000: Space Marine 2, Star Wars: Outlaws, and I want to get Astro Bot. Let's see if two weeks will be enough to make at least a small dent in my gaming library. Especially since I also want to read some more books (I've recently reviewed the Boox Go Color 7 on my personal blog; it's a colored e-ink reader which supports Android and my new way to read most comics).

But I digress, let's get to this week's newsletter.

Bazzite is my new BFF

In last week's newsletter I mentioned that I am currently working on transforming my AYANEO AM02 into a couch-PC. Back then, my biggest problem was what OS to choose. I could either install Windows 11, which isn't great on handhelds or TVs, or install Bazzite. But for Bazzite, I wrote this:

But what that means is that I would lose access to Game Pass, proper support of Nvidia eGPUs, and would have to deal with making non-Steam games run smoothly on the device (also, apparently I couldn't even use my beloved GeForce Now properly since via Chrome it maxes at 1600p120, and my TV can do 4K120).

Well, it turns out the solution was just to install both. I ended up splitting my 1TB SSD into two (600GB for Bazzite, the rest for Windows 11), setting up Bazzite as the main OS, and writing a little script to boot into Windows 11 straight from Gaming mode. Now I'd like to figure out how I can add an eGPU to the mix so that I can play heavier games locally without having to use Moonlight or GeForce Now.

To recreate the same script, do the following:

1. In Bazzite Desktop mode, open up the terminal, and type efibootmgr. Here, find the number that has the Windows partition (if it says something like Boot0004 the number is 4).
2. Now type nano windows.sh to create a script (I called mine windows.sh, but you can call it whatever you want), and type:
   sudo efibootmgr -n X
reboot
   Replace X with the corresponding number. Press Ctrl+O, then Enter and then Ctrl+X and Enter to save the script.
3. Back in the terminal, type sudo chmod +X ./windows.sh to make it run.
4. Finally, we need to write an exception so the script doesn't ask for the sudo password. Run which efibootmgr to find where it's located (usr/sbin/efibootmgr in my case). Type sudo nano /etc/sudoers.d/sudo-exempt and in the new file type: %wheel ALL=(root) NOPASSWD: /usr/sbin/efibootmgr (don't forget to replace the path with the correct one in case it's different than mine). Press Ctrl+O, then Enter and then Ctrl+X and Enter to save the script.
5. We're done. Now all we need to do is open up Steam, click on Library, then Add a Game, and add the windows.sh script we've just created. Now when you launch the script, it'll boot up Windows 11, and to get back to Bazzite OS, you simply restart the machine.

This solution is probably the best of both worlds. In fact, I love it so much, that I'm considering doing this on all my handhelds. Right now, I only have a 512GB SSD in my ROG Ally, but I might pick up a larger SSD to recreate this installation. Heck, I've even been wondering if I should install Bazzite on my main Gaming PC.

The lead dev of EmuDeck is probably grinning right now (context)!